Climate Change

Climate Change

Vulnerability assessment to identify the sources of livelihood vulnerability in the estuarine communities and identify opportunities for building household, community as well as ecosystem resilience against climate and non-climate
stressors.

Coastal flooding and shoreline erosion is increasingly impacting people, property and ecosystems in many parts of the Western Region’s coast. Coastlines and flood plains are dynamic systems that have always posed risks as places to build, whether or not people recognize those dangers. As population grows and development intensifies in the region, demand for land is rising, even in increasingly risky shoreline locations. Poor citizens are pushed into marginal, unsafe flood prone areas to live. New residential and industrial developments are filling in any available land, reducing the ability of waterways to handle rising waters from storms. This sets up a vicious cycle that reduces public safety and increases the demand for costly shore protection and drainage works that may not actually solve the problems.

The purpose of this initiative is to draft a model process and collect local input for incorporating vulnerabilities and resilience into coastal planning. This supports the overarching Hen Mpoano goal of enhanced governance in the Western Region. In particular, our goal is to enhance the capacity of District officials and community leaders to incorporate issues related to coastal resources management and governance into developing their planning efforts, and to insure that natural hazards and vulnerabilities are accounted for and integrated within their strategies.

Recently available climate change scenarios for Ghana show a compounding of the impacts of existing hazards on coastal districts and communities in the Western Region. Moderate sea level rise is accelerating shoreline erosion, increasing coastal flooding, threatening the functioning of piers, docks and seawalls, shifting estuaries to ocean salinity levels, contaminating coastal fresh water wells, and intruding on coastal river water supply intakes. Changes in air and water temperature, change in rainfall intensity and frequency, and the patterns of rainfall and storm runoff are also affecting public safety, economic well-being and food availability.

Newspaper publication on the coastal erosion, and the devastating effect of tidal waves along Ghana’s coast. The article looks at mitigation and coping Strategies to address the issue of coastal erosion as sea level continues to rise due to climate change.